French iTunes law goes into effect

The closely watched French law that allows regulators to force Apple Computer Inc. to make its iPod digital music players and iTunes online store compatible with rival offerings went into effect Thursday, reports the Associated Press.

Although the law passed France's parliament June 30, the country's Constitutional Council last week threw out several measures, concluding that they violated constitutional property protections.

According to the AP, French President Jacques Chirac signed the legislation this week with the council's changes. The law was then published in the government's Journal Official on Thursday, formally putting it into effect.

Apple, which had described an earlier draft of the copyright bill as "state-sponsored piracy," did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment, the AP reported.

A lot of people want that kind of control here. It's insane: if you don't like Apple's DRM, DON'T FREAKIN BUY IT.

But the French want to have their cake and eat it too.

This is one of the reasons the French unemployment rate is so high. No respect for corporations = No jobs.

How many people did Apple employ in France? How many will get laid off when the record companies tell Apple to pull out? This also means iPods will cost twice as much as they'll have to be bought through E-bay and whatnot.

Apple's music sales this past year in Europe was 150 million, up from 50 million the year before. That's a decent amount of change, and it will only increase. I'm not so sure that Apple would want to pull out of any of it.

This law, as it now stands, is not that harsh. Apple can work around it.

The Scandinavian countries are more opposed than the French were. We'll have to see what happens there.

I thought they had thrown out the part of the law that required Apple to open up their DRM among other things...

Not exactly. They say that the 1789 code enshrines property rights. Thus, Apple, and others, must be paid for their giving others their information. The question is how much. If Apple asked 5 cents for every song, that would eliminate the profits from the other companies sales.

The other aspect is that Apple can go to their content providers and request (demand) a letter specifically stating that they do not want Apple to release that information to other competitors.

Well, if Apple operates as a legal entity, as I'm fairly sure they do, they must have their books inspected, just as any other company must. If a company requests a cross license, they must respond. It goes from there.